Here's a Ghost AU, peeps! I challenged myself to keep it short ;)
Path of Light
There is a man in her bed.
Regina screams, stumbling down the mattress, falls, her back pressed to the wall, her chest going up and down as if life has been squeezed out of her.
Don't be afraid, he says. He looks sad. Regina watches him.
You're the first one who can see me.
What do you mean?, she answers. A little step towards him, even her heart hasn't stopped its frantic tattoo.
He lifts from the bed, his hand goes up, his eyes asking for permission. He nears the hand to her cheek.
And she feels a delicate swoosh of wind, but nothing else. There isn't the warmth that his hand should have.
His sad eyes make sense, now.
;
She has her answers two hours later, at the Saint Margaret's Memorial Hospital.
He's standing next to her – but also laying in front of her, dressed of a green nightgown, wires and tubes attached to his arms and nose, a monitor checking his pulse and vitals.
He's in a coma.
A tear slips down her cheek.
I'm sorry, she whispers.
;
He stays with her.
Gives her privacy, obviously, when she requests it. They have their heated moments, because she went to the library and brought home all the books about ghosts she could find, and he got mad, I'm not dead yet, Regina.
She was furious, because he was ungrateful in his own powerlessness.
She told him to stay away. And when he was back, two days later, she had finally realized she was the only one who could help him.
;
She feels stupid, at work.
Has learned how to speak without being noticed, at the corner of her mouth. Otherwise, they'd think she's crazy.
Sometimes, he gets bored and fluctuates away.
;
One evening, he tells her about his family.
That his wife remarried, after almost five years. She still goes to see him, brings a bundle of irises.
;
She comes home drunk, after a vodka night with Mal, and he's angry. Because that man's hands where a little too wandering, and she could have been hurt, there in front of him, and he'd have been forced to watch without being able to act.
I don't need your protection, she spits.
;
They play chess, during the evenings. She moves the pieces for him.
She always uses the black ones, but moves first even if she shouldn't. When he protests, she shrugs and smiles.
;
I wonder how I would feel if I could touch you, he whispers one day, when he thinks she's sleeping.
Regina clenches the sheets, her eyes squeezing in the dark, because she has wondered the same thing over and over.
;
When it's been five years of coma, he returns to her one night, terrified. His wife has decided to terminate his life, to unplug the machines keeping him alive.
Regina reaches the hospital in the morning, and storms into his room.
I'm sorry, who are you? Marian says, her hand curling around her new husband's .
Regina ignores her, and her fingers brush against Robin's skin, his cheek. I'm sorry, she murmurs. The same words from months ago, when she first saw his body.
When her lips touch his forehead, his eyes open.
